MEL BROOKS IS ALIVE PLEASE BEAR THAT IN MIND WHEN YOU SEE BIRTHDAY POSTS ABOUT HIM TODAY I REPEAT MEL BROOKS IS VERY MUCH ALIVE

Liberal minded people, members of a minority or not, urgently need to get our heads round the fact that there is ALWAYS a reaction against gains in equality and not get allowed to ourselves to be seduced by the idea that it wouldn’t have happened if the less privileged group had been more discreet.

Mel Brooks is 100 today. Drop a gif of your favorite of his films to celebrate.

Buy. Physical. Media.

Considering I'm often viewed by friends as the incrementalist liberal, quite nice to be the leftist firebrand for once.

I asked both Milibands the same question: is there enough humility and self-doubt in politics. Ed Miliband made a self-deprecating joke that implied he wasn’t immune to self-doubt. David literally didn’t understand the question, which is an answer in itself.

You've parked your last Lincoln.

You've Swifted your last Taylor, no wait

You've Deathed your last Cab, Cutie.

Dalston (Hackney) Council By-Election Result: 🌍 GRN: 57.7% (-2.6) 🌹 LAB: 36.0% (+6.9) ➡️ RFM: 2.7% (-0.1) 🔶 LDM: 2.5% (-2.0) 🌳 CON: 1.1% (-2.3) Green HOLD. Changes w/ 2026.

Damn. My home is Reform. That Labour drop is brutal. The big two losing two thirds to Reform and Plaid.

Treorchy (Rhondda Cynon Taf) Council By-Election Result: 🌼 PLC: 70.8% (+31.4) ➡️ RFM: 16.0% (New) 🌹 LAB: 10.1% (-45.1) 🌳 CON: 1.7% (-3.8) 🌍 GRN: 1.4% (New) Plaid Cyrmu HOLD. Changes w/ 2022.

North Acton (Ealing) Council By-Election Result: 🌍 GRN: 30.2% (+1.4) 🌹 LAB: 24.1% (-4.6) 🔶 LDM: 19.6% (+8.3) ➡️ RFM: 11.6% (-0.1) 🌳 CON: 9.6% (-3.5) 🏘️ ECI: 4.8% (New) No REU (-4.5) or TUSC (-1.8) as previous. Green HOLD. Changes w/ 2026.

Llangennech (Carmarthenshire) Council By-Election Result: 🌼 PLC: 41.1% (+11.0) 🌹 LAB: 28.9% (+5.3) ➡️ RFM: 24.2% (-18.9) 🌳 CON: 3.3% (+2.4) 🙋 Ind: 0.9% (New) 🌍 GRN: 0.7% (New) 🔶 LDM: 0.6% (-1.0) No GWL (-0.4) as previous. Plaid Cyrmu GAIN from Reform. Changes w/ 2025.

this is ...totally intentional, friends. and next he's going to start casually mentioning in passing that literacy tests for voting weren't the worst idea and he also has been thinking about separate water fountains a lot lately

Under today’s massively PR’d draft bill banning LGBT conversion therapy, Alan Turing never underwent conversion therapy. Because it was done by the State for his own wellbeing. 🥸🫪 Same now for trans people. Pink-washing garbage.

My bit for the AC discourse: everyone’s wrong. The main reason we don’t have AC in this country is because until the last few years you only needed it 3-5 days per year and it’s not worth the outlay of £350 for a portable AC unit so no one tried to sell them to us.

The draft conversion practices bill has so many loopholes, you could hang every keyring and carabiner owned by the trans community from them and still have loopholes to spare. Anyone celebrating it gains professionally or personally from doing so

Europe: "we're suffering from bad weather" Americans: "have you tried buying things?"

so erm it seems like the dominoes are lining up to allow canadian participation in eurovision

And that was because the prior Labour chancellor became PM.

Legitimately, I didn't see the news ahead of a recent heatwave - I was only in town for three days in between trips and the only thing I'd got in my regular shop was for a goulash recipe. I nearly died.

"we're banning conversion therapy, from now on it'll be illegal for anyone to say 'mwahahaha I'm doing conversion therapy' before applying electrodes to vulnerable people, but with important protections for psychotherapists who might reasonably think conversion therapy is a likely outcome"

Can't agree more. There's no real benefit to only banning things in the conditions that they're not really commonly happening and having carve outs for the circumstances where they are happening quite a lot. That's not a ban it's a charter for legitimising a controversial and disproven practice.

Yesterday, a BBC journalist talked about how it was time for ice cream for breakfast, after interviewing a medical professional on tips for trying to avoid health impacts.

Impressive. Normally it takes several years of service on Ealing Council before you reach that level of nihilism.

Just recieved four NHS letters Two identical saying I haven't responded and that I may be kicked off a waiting list. I've already had two appointments about it and have the third and final booked. One dated 9th June giving me a phone check-in on 20th July. One dated 13th June cancelling it.

Seems to be a lot of selective memory in UK's right-wing newspapers about schools not closing during the 1976 heatwave. I just checked and, yes, many schools did close early as well as allow parents to "keep their children at home if they wish". This clipping from London Evening News, 29 June 1976

So basically conversion therapy will still be legal if it is carried out by the NHS 🤦🏻‍♀️

until the show comes back someday with an actual casting, the role of doctor who has been assigned to philomena cunk the regeneration amnesia has her a little bit confused, but she's gonna travel time and space asking the important questions

Man i know buzzfeed et al have been stealing stories from viral posts for years but the independent doing it (without crediting me or the Reddit post) is kind of a new low lmao

As we have experienced this week, extreme temperatures are no longer a future threat. They are a present danger. Today, I’m launching London’s first ever heat plan: a city-wide plan to adapt our capital, protect communities, and build a climate-resilient city.

It sets out actions to make our city more resilient, including: 🔴 Retrofitting homes at the highest risk of overheating 🔴 More tree cover and green spaces 🔴 More safe access to blue spaces such as swimming 🔴 Support for our health system 🔴 Strengthening critical infrastructure

Venezuela: Carascas residents describe panic as earthquakes hit

Horrible scenes in Venezuela tonight: Powerful 7.2 foreshock and 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit Venezuela, collapsing buildings in the capital of Caracas. Follow live updates. www.cnn.com/2026/06/24/w...

Structural collapse in Venezuela after 7.1 magnitude earthquake west of Caracas.

And PAGER is up. Very likely more than 1,000 dead from this earthquake and likely in the 10,000 range. Damage estimates in the $10+ billion range, 2% to 20% of Venezuela's GDP. Shit.

USGS estimates on damage and fatalities will take a while with something like this. When it's done it'll be on this page under PAGER:

sorry what?

I don’t think this was the moment where it became inevitable that Starmer would flame out after two years, but I do think it was the clearest illustration that he was terminally prone to panic and unable to grasp “the mayor is doing a difficult thing years before his re-election is due”.

We’ve provisionally broken the UK record for the highest June minimum temperature🌡️ Bute Park, Cardiff only fell to 23.5°C overnight, making it the highest June minimum temperature for Wales and the UK 🥵 Plymouth only dropped to 23.0°C, making for a new England record 🌡️

Richard Kilpatrick is our candidate for Greater Manchester Mayor. Best of luck Richard! 🧡

Yougov have released their last of most popular politicians. Two of the top five are there because of being confused with other people.

I admit it, I was wrong. I didn’t think there was time for a new challenger for the title “the stupidest and most ill-conceived political gambit of the Starmer era”, but “Operation Save Rachel” has won it at the death.

Poppy Coburn is on Newsnight confidently pronouncing Andy Burnham as a diehard leftist because he mentioned "aspirational socialism" in a New Statesman interview - seemingly unaware that it was his slogan in 2010 when he ran as the Blairite candidate

French Resistance fighter and historian Marc Bloch, murdered by the Gestapo in 1944, is inducted into Panthéon in Paris.

This is Richard. He's sometimes accused of not being a real dog because of his weird paws and inability to bark. Thinks his pack would say otherwise. 12/10 for all (IG: richardandtheguardians)

can’t believe a narcissist is being so publicly humiliated by a reflecting pool